Mod Installation
STARGATE INVASION DIP 1.34 will work ONLY on Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy version 1.34 First: Go to the mod directory of SoaSE: Diplomacy. The sins mod folder locations are: For Windows XP users: C:\Documents and Settings\"your user name" \local settings\ Application Data\Ironclad Games\ Sins of a solar empire\Mods-Diplomacy v1.34 NOTE: "Your User Name" is your windows account name. Whatever administraitor user name you log into windows as. For Vista, and Windows 7 users: C:\Users\"your user name"\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Mods-Diplomacy v1.34 (You may have to change your folder settings to show hidden files, and folders in your window options)You found the right mod folder, right? Good. If not might i suggest taking some computer classes. Now create a new folder in Mods-Diplomacy v1.34 called "SGI DIP 1.34 MOD ". Then open the mods rar/7ZIP file (what you downloaded), Open the SGI DIP 1.34 MOD folder inside it to show the folders "galaxy, gameinfo, mesh, textures, etc. etc".Select all from there, and drag it all into your newly created SGI DIP 1.34 MOD folder. Now inside the SGI DIP 1.34 FOLDER you should see the folders Galaxy, Gameinfo, Mesh, Textures, Etc. Along with the files "entity.manifest, playerpictures.manifest, skybox.manifest, Etc Etc. If you see a folder called SGI DIP 1.34 MOD after extracting. Then you did something wrong.Yes, it would be simpler to just drag the SGI DIP 1.34 MOD folder into your mod folder, but there are too many computer "inepts" out there. We had too many instances of TWO SGI folders being created. One inside of the other. I posted the "hard way" to avoid this from happening. Are you mad yet? GOOD. That means you are paying attention. Keep reading.Start SoaSE: Diplomacy, Navigate to the Options\Mods screen, You should see "SGI DIP 1.34" on the list of mods. Select "SGI DIP 1.34 MOD", and enable the mod. The game will pause for a bit while the mod loads. When the mod is loaded you should see a nice SGI DIP 1.34 MOD. Set up a game like any normal sins game, and enjoy.Diplomacy keeps mods enabled untill you disable them manually. So SGI will run every time you start Diplomacy untill you disable it. For best results run the mod on a CLEAN install of Sins with no other mods active. Download the latest version of Sins, and Expansions via Impulse. (Diplomacy v1.34 as of this mod version)The SGI DIP 1.34 MOD, and greater will work ONLY on Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy. Patched to version 1.34. Yes i already stated that above. I am stating it AGAIN to make sure you are reading this. We have had one too many people asking "what version is this mod for?", because they dont bother to read the README. 'Optional Tweaks' 1) In your Options\Effects uncheck, and Disable "Ship Mesh Highlight Filter". Having this enabled WILL cause some wierd lighting issues with modded ships. Example: Some ships appear much brighter than others almost like the hull is glowing. The "Ship Mesh Highlight Filter" feature was meant for you to easily see very small ships at a distance. SGI does not need this feature. We have not yet figured out how to adjust the parameters to work with modded ships. It is best to disable it for now. 2) You can tweak how bright the ships appear in game, but you will have to do some "modding" yourself. The Sins engine renders the ships extremely dark depending on what map, or background you chose. The Ship Mesh Highlight Filter is supposed to compensate for this. However we have not had any time to tweak the modded ships to use this feature yet. There is an alternative. Open the GS_Ship file located in the mods "PipelineEffect" folder with notepad, or wordpad. (you will need to copy/paste this file from your sins install PipelineEffect folder into the mods PipelineEffect folder) The line itself is over half way down and looks like this: float4 GetLightColor(float3 incidence, float3 normal, float4 liteLightColor, float4 darkLightColor) { float dot = max(dot(incidence, normal), 0.f); float lerpPercent = 1.f - clamp(pow(dot, 5.f), 0.f, 1.f); <------ This is the line you are looking for. float blackThreshold = .65f; float colorLerpPercent = min(lerpPercent / blackThreshold, 1.f); Now, its the Float lerpPercent = 1.f that is the magic number. I have mine at .89, yours should be at 1.f (the default setting). When you lower the number, the ships get brighter. Raise the number they get darker... Now this works for most NVIDIA users. For ATI users you may need to do the opposite. You RAISE the number, and the ships get brighter. When you lower it they get darker. I would have incorporated this into the mod, but since Ironclad never fixed the Nvidia/ATI bugs it is here as an optional tweak. Use it only if you wish to. Just make a backup of the original file in case you screw it up. Thank you Admiral Cobbs for finding this out!! :) Category:Installation